British wind will power the UK?s new offshore

I wonder how much money will be wasted and end up in crony's pockets before the truth dawns...

I always thought tidal power would be more reliable.

Oh dear. Not this old chestnut.

That's the danger of Thinking rather than thinking. No it wouldn't be any more reliable. And considerably more expensive. And massively damaging to the environment - as is all 'renewable' energy.

Analysis has been done by smarter folk than us who have taken the trouble to look a UK tides around the coast and you?re still left with regular gaps in power generation. You cannot provide continuous power this way.

Tim

I don't quite understand that one. No power station runs 24/7. It has to be down for maintenance (etc) at some time. And consumes fuel of some sort. Using 'renewables' as available cuts down the amount of fuel it uses.

At what cost to the environment.

You can't just remove a few GW from a system and expect no knock on effects.

Well you can if you are a dumb greenie.

But isn't all this using a very 'local' outlook?

Whilst there might be gaps in tidal power round the UK, there wouldn't be round the world and we already have some interconnects (that would need uprating etc) to other countries that also have loads of coastline that would be out of sync with ours?

Similar applies to PV of course and in theory we could track the sun around the world as each area is exposed to it.

Even if that sort of thing doesn't happen now I reckon it will be used (more) in the future.

Cheers, T i m

The sort of power stations that have a high efficiency don't cope at all well with stopping and starting or running at low outputs. So even if they are only required to cover, say, a four hour a day period, they have to be "running" 24 hours a day and consuming more fuel than their

When shut down for maintenance, it can take a number of days to re-start. The grid has to have enough excess capacity to cover a number of stations being off-line, still air, at night and high demand, so it has to have enough gas/coal/diesel/hydro generation to supply everything, but then struggles to cope with large fluctuations due to renewables not being predictable.

When fossil fuels get so rare the cost becomes exorbitant.

It's the Tory ethic. Never do anything until forced into it, and at the last moment. Until then, keep your head in the sand.

Haven't some of the existing tidal power generators had to scale back their operation due to the environmental impacts, including silting up?

Except the tidal range varies from 30 ft or more in the west to only about 10 ft in the NE and there aren't that many sane places for a barrage

IIRC there is only one very small tidal power staton on the UK.

I wonder why

No,they dont BUT the efficiency until about 45 minutes from warm start is not very good

Remember a CCGT is a jet engine driving a turbine with a steam turbine using the hot exhaust. From reasonably not totally cold like any jet engine they are capable of delivering useful power after 5-10 minutes but at around 40% efficiency: then as the steam circuit comes on line -

That's not the issue. That's easy.

The problem is finding sites that (a) give enough power to make a real difference (b) don't wreck large areas of the environment.

Andy

No it's not!

I did say 'similar and substantial'.

So essentially it's another 'if we could find a place where the wind blew steadily every day of the year, less than 500 miles from Birmingham'

except we cant....